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Exclamation Marks: WE ARE SO EXCITED!!!! SEE!!!

I remember a time in my life when people were rarely excited. As a kid, I don’t remember the level of excitement ever quite reaching a fever pitch. Back in elementary school, every sentence we wrote for English would end in a period. It didn’t matter what was happening. The story would read like this:

As John took a step, his foot slipped out from under him. Suddenly, he found himself teetering on the edge of the cliff.

“No,” Tim screamed furiously.

Of course, we can all see that Tim is not furiously screaming anything. In all actuality, he is just simply stating he would prefer that John did not plummet to his death. With that level of reaction, we can assume Tim was not that good of a friend.

After turning in this wonderful piece of storytelling (I won’t spoil it for you, but John is saved by a magical bald eagle), teachers would tell us to try to use different punctuation. Why not an exclamation mark? “It could liven up the story,” the would say.

Apparently, a lot of people took that advice to heart.

Now, it seems people want to shout every piece of news from a mountain top, informing the entire world of their discovery. If you don’t believe me, look through your text messages. If you’re able to ignore the fact that people think the word “you” is too difficult to spell out, you’re likely to notice that everyone is exclaiming everything.

In fact, the first text you will see on my phone is an exclamation from my wife. While many times the exclamation mark in a text is there to show a sense of urgency, this is what my text says:

I’m sure Anderson Cooper is a fine human being. He seems very kind and I find it highly unlikely that anyone in the world hates him. Ladies love his jawline that seems to be carved from granite and men really couldn’t care less if he continued to host a television program or not, but they definitely do not wish him death.

That being said, the fact that Anderson Cooper has a talk show does not seem like something that should share a punctuation mark with a statement like, “Look out! The zombies are behind you!” or “You ate my sandwich! Prepare to die!”

These little marks of excitement are everywhere. Your Facebook probably has multiple status updates reading like they were the most exciting news ever. I am only slightly interested in your dog, but posting a picture with the caption, “AWWW! TOOO CUTE!” does not change that.

On Twitter, if a person doesn’t end a tweet with an exclamation mark, it is boring and definitely not worth reading. If I were to tweet, “Just ate a burrito #yummyfoodsinmytummy,” it would definitely not carry the same weight as “JUST ATE A BURRITO! #seehowexcitediamaboutfood.”

Even newspaper headlines are beginning to add exclamation marks. This is from a medium that, after one of the bigger disasters of the 20th century, printed, “Hindenburg Explodes: 30 Die in Crash of Airship.” If this were written today, it would probably read something more like this: “OH NO! Hindenburgh Blows Killing 30!” Then, it would be followed by an editorial blaming the explosion on Republicans/Democrats/Barack Obama/Sarah Palin/Kim Kardashian’s butt.

I personally feel like this has become a boy who cried wolf scenario. Now, I will never know when I am actually supposed to be excited. What level of excitement do I show a friend who is on fire when my friend used six exclamation marks to tell the world she was baking cookies?

For the sake of all of us, go easy on the exclamation marks. Someday you will actually need to use one for emphasis but we will be so immune that it won’t register that you really need someone to call 911. After all, you acted this excited about a sale on yams at Trader Joes just yesterday.

If you still feel that everything is important enough for an exclamation, you may want to see a doctor. You clearly need some sort of mood stabilizer.

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Tell your friends that their life is meaningless without reading this:

I’m pretty sure that your friend being on fire rates a line and a half of exclamation marks. Unless your friend owes you money, then it’s only a half line. I agree that exclamation marks are over used today. I once read a chapter written by a college student where every line of dialogue ended in an exclamation mark. I wondered why everyone was shouting at each other.

This is a topic I am very interested in. I was noticing this about my notifications from Twitter. Whenever someone replies to me or RTs me, the notifications from Twitter always end in an exclamation point, but whenever I get a notification from Facebook, it simply ends with a period. Could this mean that people who use Twitter are more excited people???

I think it’s high time that we either start taxing exclamation marks or enlist ASCII to develop a new “real” exclamation mark for when it’s really needed. People don’t seem to understand that conxext is everything when it comes to exclamation marks. Take your burrito-eating friend, for example. Now if he was telling everyone that he was eating a Mexican souvlaki, that doesn’t require an exclamation mark, but if he was claiming to have just eaten a small burro, now that would be worthy of an exclamation mark!

By the way, I read the title, and immediately thought it was a pregnancy announcement post. Your exclamation marks did their job. I got excited for a minute there. Actually, I got excited for a minute there!